United Kingdom Military Installations
Debate between Luke Pollard and Patricia Ferguson(1 day, 12 hours ago)
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Luke Pollard
I am not neutral on this matter. I want more resource for defence, and I have made that case very strongly from the Dispatch Box. We have an increasing defence budget. The Chancellor set out that 3% of our GDP will be spent on defence in 2030 and 3.5% by 2035. My priority will be to spend it wisely and to make sure we learn the lessons from the broken procurement system we inherited so that we have more of that money on the frontline where it is needed.
Patricia Ferguson (Glasgow West) (Lab)
Will the Minister outline the impact the defence investment plan will have on improving the security technology and infrastructure at our bases?
Luke Pollard
Yes. The £470 million investment over the next four years in the DIP is for both upgrading the traditional security arrangements that the House will be familiar with—the physical security—and, increasingly, looking at the counter-drone threat and vulnerabilities that were previously not something that defence would worry about. When there are new technologies that we have a greater concern about, we will continue to invest, beyond the four-year period, in more base upgrades as the defence investment period continues.
Defence Industrial Strategy
Debate between Luke Pollard and Patricia Ferguson(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Luke Pollard
I thank the hon. Member for welcoming the strategy—it is good to see cross-party support for our defence industry. I also welcome her words about the support that we provide to Ukraine. A lesson that we are learning from the war in Ukraine is that we can procure faster, better and more effectively using increased freedoms. That is precisely the lesson from our work supporting our Ukrainian friends that we are seeking to apply in order to support UK armed forces.
Negotiations on UK participation in SAFE are led jointly by the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Defence. We will seek to continue those conversations. There needs to be provision of value for money for the British taxpayer and opportunities for British businesses, and I am confident that the discussions will be productive.
The SME office that we are seeking to create is one way of helping those small businesses that feel that they have an innovative project for defence, but struggle with the labyrinthine bureaucracy and confusion about who to go to. Having a one-stop shop that enables people to access those contracts and navigate the process will be a real boost for SMEs selling their products into the Ministry of Defence.
The hon. Member is right about the need for spiral development, but in reducing the contracting times, we need to be alive to the fact that the technologies that we procure need to be spiral developed at pace, so that we do not have a legacy system that then gets spiral development many years later.
On the hon. Member’s two final questions, the Type 26 deal with Norway is a superb boost for shipbuilding on the Clyde. Discussions with our Norwegian friends have already started about the build slots, but the Royal Navy will receive our Type 26 frigates in the 2030s as planned. No decisions have been made about the recruitment contract that she mentioned. The intention is to make a decision in February 2026, but I have heard what she said in relation to that.
Patricia Ferguson (Glasgow West) (Lab)
On Thursday, I had the pleasure of visiting BAE Systems in my constituency with the Prime Minister. I spoke to many of the apprentices there, who are looking forward to a very long and secure future in their jobs. Can the training academy model used at Scotstoun be considered for integration into the defence academies? Might Glasgow be one of the locations for such an academy, presumably following discussions with the Scottish Government?
Luke Pollard
I thank my hon. Friend for championing the work that takes place at Scotstoun. In both Govan and Scotstoun, we have an incredible workforce building the world’s best anti-submarine warfare frigate, and I am very glad that they have been getting such a lot of attention since the Norway deal, because they deserve it. The skills academy that BAE has built on the Clyde, as well as the skills academy it has built in Barrow for the submarine build work, are best in class. They really provide an opportunity to skill people up for a lifetime of opportunity, and they are precisely the types of investments that we want to see more defence companies make. I will take her question as an early bid for one of those colleges. I look forward to continuing work with her and other Glasgow MPs on how we make the most of the Type 26 project.